David N. Miller

Head of Private Credit & Equity | 21 years industry experience

David N. Miller

Head of Private Credit & Equity 21 years industry experience

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We take pride in the depth and breadth of our private markets platform and our collaborative approach to return generation across our portfolios.

Biography

David Miller is the Head of Private Credit & Equity and a member of the management committee at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. He joined Morgan Stanley in 2016 and has over 21 years of investing experience.

Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Mr. Miller was the Chief Executive Officer of Silver Bay Realty Trust Corp., a publicly traded real estate investment trust he co-founded in 2011 to capitalize on the significant dislocation in the residential housing market. Prior to Silver Bay, Mr. Miller was a Managing Director at Pine River Capital Management and Two Harbors Investment Corp. where he focused on investment strategy and new business development.

During the global financial crisis (2008 - 2011), Mr. Miller served in various roles at the U.S. Department of Treasury, including as the Chief Investment Officer of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) where he created complex crisis response investment programs and managed the $700 billion portfolio. Prior to Treasury, Mr. Miller held various investment roles, including as a portfolio manager at HBK Investments and in the Special Situations Group at Goldman Sachs & Co., where he focused on opportunistic investments in public and private debt and equity.

Mr. Miller received an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.A. magna cum laude in Economics from Dartmouth College where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Q&A with David

Could you provide us with a brief overview of Morgan Stanley Investment Management’s private credit and equity capabilities?

Sure. We have about 150 professionals dedicated to providing private capital predominantly to middle-market companies. Our investments range from minority equity stakes in growth businesses to majority control of more mature companies. In general, we look to make investments in high-quality businesses that are leading players in their industries and have significant growth potential. We like to see strong and defensible margins, high returns on equity and we especially like to work with founders and management teams that are looking to grow to the next level of size and sophistication. All of our strategies are supported by investment teams with decades of experience and deep expertise within their respective areas. We always look to leverage the broader Morgan Stanley franchise to add additional value to our investments.

What differentiates Morgan Stanley's private investing platform from its competitors?

Being part of one of the best global investment banks in the world. We can sit down with any company interested in receiving capital from us, ask “what are your needs?” and then access not just the expertise of our own professionals across investment management, but also that of Morgan Stanley's bankers, analysts and approximately 56,000 employees.

Can you discuss how an investment from Morgan Stanley may benefit a middle-market company?

I think it comes down to leveraging our firm's network to source and enhance business operations and our access to unparalleled financial expertise. Morgan Stanley's global network not only allows us to source transactions, but it also provides our investment teams with opportunities to significantly enhance the operational and financial performance of our portfolio companies. We can connect executives to other industry leaders, new customers or suppliers and identify and recruit new managers. For example, let’s say we make an investment in a consumer products company. We can leverage our team in China to make introductions and potentially expand distribution channels.

What do you want prospective investors and business partners to know about you and your team?

That we value our relationships and reputation above everything else. We’ll do whatever we can to help any company that we work with, even if we do not take a majority stake in the business. Recently, the CEO and founder of a company in which we made a credit investment a few years earlier got in touch with us and asked us if we could help him work out the company’s future strategy. We looped in one of our senior investment bankers who specializes in the CEO’s industry as well as someone from one of our private equity teams and started a dialogue to help him strategize. We were ultimately able to provide several interesting ideas and connect him with other companies to discuss partnerships and potential acquisitions. We don’t own this company, and he’s not likely to need any more credit from our team, nor would he be an investment banking client, but this is the kind of thing everyone does at Morgan Stanley—we constantly draw on each other’s expertise to assist our clients and partners.

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